Peter Walks for Democracy

I’ve been watching people get wrapped up in manufactured controversies—manfufactroversies—lately. The zombie armies of climate change deniers, doubters, boomers, and climate inactivists are out in force. Their goal is to undermine the public’s confidence in good actions. Who are they and what do they do?

When some special interest sees an issue as a threat to its position, it will insinuate doubt, sow distrust, and imply or overtly allege corruption by those they see as a threat. They become “merchants of doubt” as Naomi Oreskes and Eric Conway call them. Their main goal is to undermine the public’s trust in an action, a set of facts, or a group that operates according to knowable standards—reporters, scientists, doctors, judges, or government officials. The merchants use the freedoms afforded in a democracy—press, radio, film, and assembly—to play on common values but counteract the public’s interest. They are clever, persistent, and insidious.

Climate scientists have known for over a hundred years that adding carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere will warm the planet. It is basic chemistry and physics. They have rightly pointed out that the global average temperature has risen over 1.3 degrees Celsius as we have increased carbon dioxide 50% in the atmosphere over the last 150 years.

Since heat is energy, we should expect more violent and heat-related weather: droughts, wild fires, heat waves, and cyclones. We are experiencing them all over the world. But the politicians and media outlets that fossil fuel interests pay have been wreaking havoc on that truth for years. They use effective messages and messengers to undermine the public’s confidence in the reality they face. Climate isn’t the only place they have been effective.

Smoking tobacco causes cancer. Medical researchers could prove this for years.  “Doubt is their product.” The same people hired to create a smokescreen (no pun intended) about greenhouse gas emissions causing climate change did the same about the link between smoking and lung cancer.

The modern synthesis of the theory of evolution is the only viable scientific explanation of life on Earth. But creationists try to foist the wizardry of creationism (including so-called “intelligent design”) on the public. They are well-funded deceivers.

There are plenty more. But that will do.

In order to sow doubt, they have to have a strategy. The strategy requires a group that is often difficult to pin down. They join themselves to a media platform or platforms that is itself connected to a receptive audience. The message will pollute the truth, inevitably making it a confusion for the public. Because the issues are of public concern, the goal is to hinder action. Unsurprisingly, the merchants will make moral and practical demands of their opponents they do not require of themselves.

The group will be consistent but somehow elusive. They do not fully disclose who they are. Some of the most prominent merchants of doubt were physicists like Robert Jastrow, Fred Seitz and S. Fred Singer. However, they were paid to undermine science and certainty by the American Petroleum Institute, the George C. Marshall Institute (now CO2 Coalition), and other special interest groups. 

The merchants have crafted sexy campaigns that obscure, misdirect, and lie. Their favored media technique is creating “astroturf” campaigns. “Astroturf lobbying refers to the simulation of grassroots support for or against a public policy. The objective of this tactic is for private [or special] interests to pretend they have public support for their cause. However, omitting the real sponsors of their message renders the communication unauthentic and undermines democratic and pluralist values.” People and organizations that use astroturf campaigns assert that “the people” or “the majority” or “their sources” are with them, attempting to create an illusion of unity where little, if any, exists.

They will use consistent platforms in an attempt to influence the public. “Climategate” erupted when hackers cherry-picked email segments from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit and dumped them onto “conservative” blogs. Scientists, like my friend Michael E. Mann, communicated through that unit about their work, talking through nuances of methods and findings, sometimes using shorthand. The merchants pulled single sentences out of thousands of emails, including one Mann had about a data “trick,” in an effort to discredit all of the science. It was both dishonest and totally illogical. But Sarah Palin got her hands on it and the manufactroversy spread like wildfire across reactionary talk radio, FoxNews, The Daily Mail, and other media sites of civic and scientific vandalism. The banshee climate deniers’ caterwauls created “news.” In the long run, every investigation by every scientific organization and university into the matter found these scientists were using proper practice.

Just as Jastrow, Seitz, and Singer obscured their connections to fossil fuel interests, they also obscured actual science. They were highly credentialed. They knew enough of the trade’s tools to use scientific uncertainty against science. They confused the public. Once again, by cherry-picking, amplifying, and repeating uncertainties, they could create doubt in the average person’s mind. Through their “think tanks,” they and their alternative societies misdirected the public by pointing out exceptions—a glacier that is gaining mass while the vast majority were losing ice. They were part of groups that manufacture alternative facts and alternative consensus through alternative reports and alternative front organizations. You can search for the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change for an example if you want to. It’s garbage, though. According to Nature, “There is near-universal consensus (97–99.9%) in the peer-reviewed scientific literature that the climate is changing as a result of human activity.^” But absent reality, the public can’t know. The merchants of doubt understand this deeply. When Trump says sea level may be going down or rising very slowly over the next 497 years or there will be more coastline…or whatever, he might be a nitwit. But the guys in labcoats playing climate expert on TV, would-be risk assessor on podcasts, or energy maven on your local radio shows probably know better. They’re just lying.

Of course, all of the above is laced with hypocrisy. They demand transparency and perfection of others while demanding neither of themselves. Ever the inverters of power, they cast themselves as David fighting Goliath, Galileo fighting the Church, the unorthodox fighting the status quo. To any reasonable observer, they are liars who make special pleas and twist logic into pretzels. 

These tactics are not going to die any time soon.

You might ask how to deal with them. 

1. Never let yourself be baited and never get into a “debate” with them. It gives them the credibility they desperately crave. 
2. When a falsehood is in front of you that you must deal with, a) call it a lie or falsehood, b) state the truth, c) tear the lie or falsehood apart, and d) state what is true again. If you are explaining everything, though, you are losing.
3. Make fun of them and their positions. Mockery and comedy are powerful.
4. Expose the strategy and the tactics. One of the reasons the merchants of doubt have been so successful is because they were effectively hidden. Don’t let them hide. It might take time to uncover, but relentless truth wins because hypocrisy undermines itself.

Why does any of this matter right now? We have a pair of climate change deniers running for the White House. They are backed by Project 2025. We can’t let them take the field.

In Pennsylvania, the General Assembly is up for grabs again, and we need bills to make it to the floor for Community Solar, an increase in the solar and wind carveouts of the Alternative Energy Portfolio Standard, and legislative support for the state’s Priority Climate Action Plan.

And locally, we need to make sure our county, school, authority, and municipal governments are supported in their pursuit of carbon emissions reduction and renewable energy targets. Even here, in the “blue bubble” of State College and the Centre Region, there is resistance, much of it disingenuous.

Knowing the tactics and what to do about them can inoculate our community, our state, and our nation from bad faith actors. Better yet, knowing how to work together will get us farther down the field.